A variety of sizes of hand tools are often needed by craftspersons, and lay persons. For example, one often needs to have hand wrenches readily available in graduated sizes and shapes, as well as in both metric and SAE measurements. A number of vendors have attempted to address this issue by selling hand tools in packaging which the craftspersons may use to store and carry the hand tools. However, in time, individual tools are often misplaced. Additionally, it may become time consuming to re-sort or replace the individual wrenches in the proper holders. This is particularly true when the craftsperson is maintaining both metric and SAE measurement wrenches.
A number of inventors have attempted to solve this problem for hand tools in general. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,001,530 describes a gang wrench for holding a plurality of wrench members of graduated sizes and shapes. The gang wrench utilizes a bow or clip which allows the user to select and utilize a particular wrench while it is within the gang, or remove the wrench from the gang for independent use. The bow or clip, however, can be generally cumbersome to use and may loosen from use and also allows individual wrenches to be lost.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,269,311 attempted to address the issue by designing a hand held device in which a set of wrenches are pivotally mounted on a single pin in a housing. The housing includes a pivotally mounted cover and latch, and casing ends walls having fitted openings through which the shank of the selected wrench will extend. Wrenches are selected by opening the cover and pivoting the selected wrench about the pin. The cover is then closed and latched allowing the wrench shank to flatly engage with, and be securely clamped in by, the fitted openings in the casing walls. While this device, succeeds in maintaining the tools in a single hand held device, it is unnecessarily complicated to manufacture. Additionally, the latch may become a single point of failure for the entire device.
Other hand tool sets for key wrenches, screw drivers and the like have been developed. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,804,970 (the "'970 patent") and 5,450,774 (the "'774 patent") disclose an elongated U-shaped channel housing a plurality of hex wrenches, screw driver heads and the like pivotably mounted on a pair of pivot bolts or pins. These devices function to organize and provide enhanced holding of a plurality of selectable devices, such as hex wrenches and screw drivers, which are rotated 360-degrees about the longitudinal axis of the tool. The individual hex wrenches or screw driver heads are selected by simply pivoting the selected wrench about pivot bolts. The hex wrenches and screw driver heads remain free to pivot about the pivot bolts during use of the tool. U.S. Pat. No. 5,320,004 (the "'004 patent") also discloses a similar device in which similar hex wrenches, screw driver heads, and the like, are mounted on pivot bolts between two cover plates.
None of these patents (the '970, the '774 or the '004 patents), however, disclose a means for fixedly securing the individual wrenches, as would be desirable for the types of wrench heads utilized in the present invention (i.e. crescent end or box end wrenches). In fact, the '004 patent and the '774 patent each utilize an alternate means of incorporating a hand wrench function into the device. For example, the U-shaped housing of the '774 pacent includes a number of different sized polygon shaped holes formed on the bottom of the channel to serve as a wrench. The '004 patent includes a removable spanner having socket holes for turning bits, nuts and screws, which may be inserted between the cover plates. Alternatively, the '004 patent provides for a spanner having a wrench head which may be slidably mounted on the pivot bolt. The devices disclosed in the '004 patent and the '774 patent, however, offer only a limited range of sizes and functions.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide an improvement of such hand held tool sets which overcomes such deficiencies and securely mounts a variety of sizes of wrenches and similar devices.